Dictionar De Motive

[Phoebe Sibilio]

Atthe time of Flaubert's death, it was unclear whether he intended eventually to publish it separately, or as an appendix to his unfinished novel, Bouvard et Pcuchet.[1] In some of his notes, it seems that Flaubert intended the dictionary to be taken as the final creation of the two protagonists. In other notes, it seems the Sottisier is intended as their final work. Flaubert's two main themes are the "castigation of the clich,"[2] and "an attack on misinformation, prejudice and incoherence as regards matters of fact.[3]

The idea of a spoof encyclopedia had fascinated him all his life. As a child, he had amused himself by writing down the absurd utterances of a friend of his mother's, and over the course of his career he speculated as to the best format for a compilation of stupidities. In a letter to Louis Bouilhet from 1850, Flaubert wrote:

The British impresario and humorist Willie Donaldson was long interested in the Dictionary; and, as "Henry Root", published something similar for the Britain of the 1980s: Henry Root's World of Knowledge.[n 1][6]

Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is simply the view thatnormative properties depend only on consequences. This historicallyimportant and still popular theory embodies the basic intuition thatwhat is best or right is whatever makes the world best in the future,because we cannot change the past, so worrying about the past is nomore useful than crying over spilled milk. This general approach canbe applied at different levels to different normative properties ofdifferent kinds of things, but the most prominent example is probablyconsequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds thatwhether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences ofthat act or of something related to that act, such as the motivebehind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.

These claims could be clarified, supplemented, and subdivided further.What matters here is just that most pairs of these claims arelogically independent, so a moral theorist could consistently acceptsome of them without accepting others. Yet classic utilitariansaccepted them all. That fact makes classic utilitarianism a morecomplex theory than it might appear at first sight.

It also makes classic utilitarianism subject to attack from manyangles. Persistent opponents posed plenty of problems for classicutilitarianism. Each objection led some utilitarians to give up someof the original claims of classic utilitarianism. By dropping one ormore of those claims, descendants of utilitarianism can construct awide variety of moral theories. Advocates of these theories often callthem consequentialism rather than utilitarianism so that theirtheories will not be subject to refutation by association with theclassic utilitarian theory.

It is less clear whether that claim by itself is sufficient to make atheory consequentialist. Several philosophers assert that a moraltheory should not be classified as consequentialist unless it isagent-neutral (McNaughton and Rawling 1991, Howard-Snyder 1994, Pettit1997). This narrower definition is motivated by the fact that manyself-styled critics of consequentialism argue againstagent-neutrality.

A definition solely in terms of consequences might seem too broad,because it includes absurd theories such as the theory that an act ismorally right if it increases the number of goats in Texas. Of course,such theories are implausible. Still, it is not implausible to callthem consequentialist, since they do look only at consequences. Theimplausibility of one version of consequentialism does not makeconsequentialism implausible in general, since other versions ofconsequentialism still might be plausible.

Still, if the definition of consequentialism becomes too broad, itmight seem to lose force. Some philosophers have argued that any moraltheory, or at least any plausible moral theory, could be representedas a version of consequentialism (Sosa 1993, Portmore 2009, Dreier1993 and 2011; but see Brown 2011). If so, then it means little tolabel a theory as consequentialist. The real content comes only bycontrasting theories that are not consequentialist.

Some moral theorists seek a single simple basic principle because theyassume that simplicity is needed in order to decide what is right whenless basic principles or reasons conflict. This assumption seems tomake hedonism attractive. Unfortunately, however, hedonism is not assimple as they assume, because hedonists count both pleasures andpains. Pleasure is distinct from the absence of pain, and pain isdistinct from the absence of pleasure, since sometimes people feelneither pleasure nor pain, and sometimes they feel both at once.Nonetheless, hedonism was adopted partly because it seemed simplerthan competing views.

The simplicity of hedonism was also a source of opposition. From thestart, the hedonism in classic utilitarianism was treated withcontempt. Some contemporaries of Bentham and Mill argued that hedonismlowers the value of human life to the level of animals, because itimplies that, as Bentham said, an unsophisticated game (such aspush-pin) is as good as highly intellectual poetry if the game createsas much pleasure (Bentham 1843). Quantitative hedonistssometimes respond that great poetry almost always creates morepleasure than trivial games (or sex and drugs and rock-and-roll),because the pleasures of poetry are more certain (or probable),durable (or lasting), fecund (likely to lead to other pleasures), pure(unlikely to lead to pains), and so on.

A related position rests on the claim that what is good is desiresatisfaction or the fulfillment of preferences; and what is bad is thefrustration of desires or preferences. What is desired or preferred isusually not a sensation but is, rather, a state of affairs, such ashaving a friend or accomplishing a goal. If a person desires orprefers to have true friends and true accomplishments and not to bedeluded, then hooking this person up to the experience machine neednot maximize desire satisfaction. Utilitarians who adopt this theoryof value can then claim that an agent morally ought to do an act ifand only if that act maximizes desire satisfaction or preferencefulfillment (that is, the degree to which the act achieves whatever isdesired or preferred). What maximizes desire satisfaction orpreference fulfillment need not maximize sensations of pleasure whenwhat is desired or preferred is not a sensation of pleasure. Thisposition is usually described as preferenceutilitarianism.

Preference utilitarianism is also often criticized on the grounds thatsome preferences are misinformed, crazy, horrendous, or trivial. Imight prefer to drink the liquid in a glass because I think that it isbeer, though it really is strong acid. Or I might prefer to die merelybecause I am clinically depressed. Or I might prefer to torturechildren. Or I might prefer to spend my life learning to write assmall as possible. In all such cases, opponents of preferenceutilitarianism can deny that what I prefer is really good. Preferenceutilitarians can respond by limiting the preferences that makesomething good, such as by referring to informed desires that do notdisappear after therapy (Brandt 1979). However, it is not clear thatsuch qualifications can solve all of the problems for a preferencetheory of value without making the theory circular by depending onsubstantive assumptions about which preferences are for goodthings.

If the recognized values all concern individual welfare, then thetheory of value can be called welfarist (Sen 1979). When awelfarist theory of value is combined with the other elements ofclassic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be calledwelfarist consequentialism.

Similarly, some consequentialists hold that an act is right if andonly if it maximizes some function of both happiness and capabilities(Sen 1985, Nussbaum 2000). Disabilities are then seen as badregardless of whether they are accompanied by pain or loss ofpleasure.

Or one could hold that an act is right if it maximizes fulfillment (orminimizes violation) of certain specified moral rights. Such theoriesare sometimes described as a utilitarianism of rights. Thisapproach could be built into total consequentialism with rightsweighed against happiness and other values or, alternatively, thedisvalue of rights violations could be lexically ranked prior to anyother kind of loss or harm (cf. Rawls 1971, 42). Such a lexicalranking within a consequentialist moral theory would yield the resultthat nobody is ever justified in violating rights for the sake ofhappiness or any value other than rights, although it would stillallow some rights violations in order to avoid or prevent other rightsviolations.

Pluralism about values also enables consequentialists to handle manyof the problems that plague hedonistic utilitarianism. For example,opponents often charge that classical utilitarians cannot explain ourobligations to keep promises and not to lie when no pain is caused orpleasure is lost. Whether or not hedonists can meet this challenge,pluralists can hold that knowledge is intrinsically good and/or thatfalse belief is intrinsically bad. Then, if deception causes falsebeliefs, deception is instrumentally bad, and agents ought not to liewithout a good reason, even when lying causes no pain or loss ofpleasure. Since lying is an attempt to deceive, to lie is to attemptto do what is morally wrong (in the absence of defeating factors).Similarly, if a promise to do an act is an attempt to make an audiencebelieve that the promiser will do the act, then to break a promise isfor a promiser to make false a belief that the promiser created ortried to create. Although there is more tale to tell, the disvalue offalse belief can be part of a consequentialist story about why it ismorally wrong to break promises.

When such pluralist versions of consequentialism are not welfarist,some philosophers would not call them utilitarian. However,this usage is not uniform, since even non-welfarist views aresometimes called utilitarian. Whatever you call them, the importantpoint is that consequentialism and the other elements of classicalutilitarianism are compatible with many different theories about whichthings are good or valuable.

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